Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON, D.C. – “Chinese Communist Party-linked outlets are openly trying to purchase radio stations inside the U.S. with the aim of controlling what Americans see, hear, and ultimately think," said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, amember of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, earlier today, applauding the adoption of his amendment to the Endless Frontiers Act.
"There’s no justification for allowing our greatest geopolitical threat to spend billions of dollars every year parroting talking points, on American airwaves, covering up unflattering and politically inconvenient truths about its totalitarian regime," said Cruz of his effort to build on his previous bill, the Blocking Evasive Attempts to Manipulate Signals (or BEAMS Act,) to prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from exploiting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) loopholes in order to propagandize to Americans through stations entangled with Chinese state-owned media outlets such as Phoenix TV.
Specifically, the amendment cites a provision under the Communications Act, which prohibits a foreign government from holding a radio station license, to include the transfer of permits or licenses to an entity that is subject to “undue influence” by the CCP or the People’s Republic of China.
“This amendment is a major step toward thwarting China’s attempts to wage information warfare, and is a part of a larger fight to untangle the United States from China’s propaganda efforts and counter the CCP’s threats,” said Cruz upon the adoption of his amendment.
Sen. Cruz previously introduced the BEAMS Act in 2020 to amend the Brinkley Act in the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit the FCC from issuing licenses that the Chinese were exploiting to broadcast propaganda into the United States from across the border with Mexico. In September 2018, Sen. Cruz sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai about this issue.
The Endless Frontiers Act advanced out of committee with six other Cruz-led amendments, including:
- An amendment facilitating cooperation with our close friends and allies — Israel, Taiwan, and Five Eyes nations — and excluding nations which engage in discriminatory boycott, divestment, and sanctioning (BDS) efforts against Israel and Jews living anywhere in Israel.
- An amendment to invest $100 million in projects for extracting rare earth elements and other critical minerals. The amendment contained portions of Sen. Cruz’s bill, the ORE Act. The ORE Act works to end U.S. dependence on China for rare earth elements and other critical minerals used to manufacture our defense technologies and high tech products by establishing a supply chain for these minerals in the U.S., including by requiring the U.S. Department of Defense to source these minerals domestically.
- An amendment greatly restricting the ability of the U.S. government to share our nuclear technology and information with China. Previous administrations had transferred enormous amounts of such technology to the Chinese Communist Party, at great harm to US national security. Sen. Cruz’s amendment ensures that will not be allowed to happen again.
- An amendment to address Chinese espionage at U.S. universities and the threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party’s activities at American educational institutions, including the CCP’s Confucius Institutes.
- An amendment to expand a secure computing enclave pilot program, which will help provide for the secure storage of federally funded research data, especially at smaller colleges and universities, and keep it safe from theft and expropriation by hostile foreign actors.
- An amendment to prevent the removal of Huawei, an espionage tool of the Chinese Communist Party masquerading as a technology company, from the Department of Commerce’s Entities List, unless the Secretary of Commerce first certifies that it does not pose an ongoing threat to the critical infrastructure of the United States or its allies.
